Soho House Rome.

Perched like an eagle’s nest in bohemian San Lorenzo, Soho House Rome stands out from the city’s crowd of hotels.

Back in the late seventies, my mother was breeding horses and travelled to the UK on a research mission. She stayed in Surrey with friends of friends, Anna and Keith, who over subsequent years came to stay with us in Queensland. I don’t really remember them but she does and with a lot of fondness, having taken a twenty-something girl under their wing on her first solo trip overseas. She also remembers meeting one of their sons, Nick, still in his school uniform at the time.

Many years later, I was living in London and working at an interior-design firm when I met Markus, a waiter at Soho House. He arranged our work Christmas do at the club in Greek Street and sometime later, I mentioned this to my mother over the phone. “That’s Nick Jones’s place! Anna and Keith’s son. You remember Anna and Keith? I didn’t but listened to her trip down memory lane, paying more attention to Soho House after that.

From the original cluster of Georgian terraces on Greek Street, Soho House completely reshaped the members-club scene, with (at the time of publication) 42 locations around the world. Markus, having worked his way up the ranks, is now the global membership director. 

Interesting from the travel perspective, today most Houses double as hotels, open to non-members for the price of a room. I stayed at two earlier this year: the magnificent Istanbul property and the recently opened Soho House Rome—the marque’s first Italian outpost—perched away from the tourist hoards in San Lorenzo. Here’s why it’s a new favourite.

Location.

Something happens when you cross the threshold into San Lorenzo. You’re no longer in Rome—at least not the tourists’ Rome, schlepping between the Colosseum, Vatican and Trevi Fountain—an ever-growing sea of selfie sticks, laminated menus and two-for-one Aperol Spritz. But walk north of Termini train station and San Lorenzo opens like a breath of air, gritty and laden with graffiti but fresh. Traffic seems gentler. Streets seem wider, lined in 19th-century industrial and residential buildings. There are no tourists—at least not like the numbers suffocating the centro storico.

San Lorenzo is home to the mammoth Sapienza University (one of the oldest in the world), Campo Verano (a must-see 200-year-old cemetery) and the monumental Fascist pile, Palazzo dell’Aeronautica, incongruously placed as ‘red’ San Lorenzo was one of the few districts to resist Mussolini’s 1922 march on Rome. Soho House overlooks the lot, occupying a 10-storey tower just a block from the cafe action along Via Tiburtina. Considering the far-from-the-crowd feel, it’s a surprisingly short 25-minute stroll to cultural gems like the Baths of Diocletian and Palazzo Massimo.

Design.

Soho House properties are often repurposed historic buildings; Paris, for example, was once the home of Jean Cocteau. A sleek and curvaceous 10-storey tower, Soho House Rome looks like it might be from the thirties but is in fact a new build. Out-of-the-way San Lorenzo, heavily bombed during WWII, afforded the team of in-house designers an opportunity to craft the property from scratch, the brand’s most ambitious project to date. Washed in pale terracotta, it suits the neighbourhood down to the ground. 

You’d be hard pressed to find a sexier bolthole in Rome: interiors dripping in texture, terrazzo and big patterns marry the fifties to the late seventies, as if a young Sophia Loren got together with Gabriella Crespi and Michelle Pfeiffer from Scarface. Rooms are tactile and luxurious; public spaces are more exuberant, in shades of olive green, red and yellow. Punchy local art marks stucco-rendered walls, emphasising artists who live and work in the Lazio region, alongside the odd international piece. No effort has been spared: even back hallways and poolside loos are gorgeous. 

Rooms.

You’d be surprised how many Roman hotels charge 500-plus euros a night for a room with a crappy bed, a clothes rack and an ugly bar fridge bunged at an angle in the corner. Not so at the House, where you wonder how they got so much boucle and burlwood from the budget. Forty-nine bedrooms, from 20m2 Tiny to 44m2 Large, have their feet firmly in la dolce vita—all curvy beds and gorgeous Ponti-esque cabinets—with the 114m2 Extra Large a little more Studio 54. There are also 20 retro-inspired apartments, up to a three-bedroom pad sleeping six.

I had a Medium room (36m2) in May, with a deep terrace overlooking the rooftops of San Lorenzo, and a Tiny in September, delighted to see the smallest room came with the same, enormously comfortable king-size bed and a more compact version of the terrace. Both were kitted out with Dyson hairdryers, clothes steamers, coffee machines and a vermouth atomiser for the perfect martini in the mini bar, as well as lotions and potions from the in-house Cowshed spa in a green-marble bathroom—all glass bottled and complimentary. Rarely are hotel-room offerings so generous, with non-member pricing from around €300/night.

Spaces.

The 7th and 8th floors are home to Soho Health Club. Comprising state-of-the-art gym and the Cowshed spa—think cryo, infrared and ozone therapies alongside the usuals—it’s such an impressive setup (there’s also a screening room) that you imagine members joining for these two floors alone. Upstairs, the 9th-floor restaurant serves a mix of House staples and locally inspired dishes, also the setting for breakfast in the cooler months. But upstairs again and things get really interesting, with a rooftop sporting 360-degree views of the Eternal City, all the way to the Apennine Mountains. Here you’ll find the main bar, a variety of lounges and the glamorous Cecconi’s, its menu packed with classics like vitello tonnato and linguine vongole holding their own on the stellar Roman food scene. A red-tiled swimming pool forms the jewel in the crown, with sun beds galore and sofa booths below a striking mural by Gio Pistone. A relaxed scene to kick back and play—in keeping with Nick Jones’s brand, founded for the city’s creatives.

To book a Bedroom, go to: www.sohohouse.com/houses/soho-house-rome

Photography: Giulia Venanzi, Mark Anthony Fox, Salva Lopez and Soho House.